Pattern Finder: Lotusphere 2009: What Might Have Been

An intriguing Guy Creese post from Orlando --

Following are two blog posts I had mentally (and optimistically) written before attending Lotusphere 2009. Unfortunately, IBM Lotus didn't make the corresponding announcements. Oh, well. But since it seems a shame to waste them, here's a glimpse of blog posts I would have loved to have made

The two scenarios Guy had in mind (see his full post for his descriptions):

IBM Lotus Combines Quickr and Connections to Create a SharePoint Killer

IBM Lotus Announces "Social for SharePoint"

A couple observations, based on what I’ve been able to track from Lotusphere 2009 (the keynotes haven’t been webcast, so I’m relying mostly on the few IBM press releases and the blogosphere snapshots):

1. Since IBM plans to add wiki capabilities to Connections 2.5 (see this post for a Connections 2.5 summary), I think IBM went in the opposite direction – creating more functional overlap and confusion about the roles for Quickr and Connections. Until now, Connections has been focused primarily on connections (go figure…), but in 2.5 it will also become a content manager (e.g., with wikis and file sharing), creating more uncertainty about which IBM offering should be used for different customer needs. Then again, since the role for the Domino-based version of Quickr is likely to be significantly reduced, if the XPages features in Domino 8.5 work as claimed by IBM, maybe there simply isn’t much of a need for the Domino-based version of Quickr anymore.

2. As for “Social for SharePoint,” since SharePoint is ultimately a standards- and Web app server-based offering, Connections should be able to integrate with SharePoint with no further work required on IBM’s part.

Pattern Finder: Lotusphere 2009: What Might Have Been